Conventionally, when a sheet-form fabric such as textile cloth is cut, the fabric is spread by using a cloth spreading machine prior to cutting, in order to make preparations for easily conducting a marking operation for pattern layout. The piled fabric is, in general, discharged manually by a worker or workers from the spreading table of the cloth spreading machine and transported to an automatic cutting machine or the like. In order to easily conduct the discharge operation, the cloth spreading machine is provided with a mechanism such that an air jet is directed from the surface of the spreading table to float the fabric, or with rollers on the surface of the spreading table.
In the cutting machine, the piled fabric is placed on the cutting table and cut into desired patterns. The cutting table generally has a surface driven as a conveyor for receiving the piled fabric and discharging the parts cut from the fabric.
FIG. 10 shows a configuration in which a prior art system capable of being driven as a conveyor is also employed in the cloth spreading machine in order to automatically transfer the piled fabric from the cloth spreading machine to the cutting machine. That is, spreading table 2 of the cloth spreading machine is designed to have a surface as a conveyor 3. The piled fabric, which has been spread and piled on a spreading table 2 when conveyor 3 was stopped, is transferred onto cutting table 5 of cutting machine 4 by driving conveyor 3. Driving conveyor 3 of spreading table 2 in synchronism with conveyor 6 of cutting table 5, makes it possible to automatically transfer the piled fabric onto cutting table 5.
FIG. 11 schematically shows the configuration of the prior art disclosed in Japanese Examined Patent Publication JP(B2) 62-25785 (1987). This prior art is functional to spread a fabric roll 7 and a fabric covering sheet roll 8 of an air-impermeable plastic sheet material on cutting table 5. This function is achieved by a sheet pinching device 11 attached to a label carriage 10 installed separately from the cutting carriage equipped with a cutting tool. The label carriage 10 travels across the surface of cutting table 5 and applies a label for identifying each part to be cut. Using this traveling function, the sheet material is pulled out held by sheet pinching device 11 from fabric roll 7 to be spread on cutting table 5. Automatically controlling label carriage 10 and sheet pinching device 11 enables the automatic discharge of the fabric onto cutting table 5.
When the piled fabric is discharged manually, it is necessary for workers to hold both widthwise ends of the fabric to prevent the fabric from being wrinkled. At least two workers are required for conducting the operation. As shown in FIG. 10, employing spreading table 2 driven as a conveyor increases the manufacturing cost of cloth spreading machine 1. On the other hand, like the prior art shown in FIG. 11, in the case where no cloth spreading machine is installed, the operations of pulling out the fabric from the fabric roll and spreading the pulled-out fabric are carried out in cutting machine 4. Cutting is unable to be carried out during the operation of pulling-out the fabric, which results in lowering the activity rate of cutting machine 4.
In general, because cutting machine 4 cuts parts from the fabric with cutting carriage 9 while cutting table 5 generates a vacuum, the length of cutting table 5 may be limited. Accordingly, for the purpose of satisfying various needs, it is rather convenient to provide cloth spreading machine 1 beside cutting machine 4, and to make the length of spreading table 2 greater than that of cutting table 5 so that a fabric that is longer than cutting table 5 may be spread. With this design, in cases where the fabric is cut into pieces that are longer than cutting table 5, an advanced method and system may be also employed. The fabric is repeatedly cut at each cutting operation in such a manner that when cutting of one portion has been completed, the next portion is moved to the cutting table position. Unlike the prior art, the advance method and system is adopted only to each portion of fabric which is pulled out continuously from fabric roll 7 to be processed. Therefore, the efficiency of cutting operation is not so high.